It took all of one start in the JR Motorsports No. 88 Chevrolet for the popular young driver Rajah Caruth to score his best career finish (10th) and first career top-10 in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. The former fulltime NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series driver is doing a limited schedule in 2026 for JR Motorsports but was certainly energized by the Daytona debut.
The 23-year-old, two-time winner in the truck series is back behind the wheel this weekend at Atlanta and brings some extra confidence to the seat in Saturday’s race.
“Checked some boxes or maybe answered some questions I had about really running up front in an O’Reilly [series] car,’’ Caruth said. “I ran the Fall race [at Atlanta] for Jordan Anderson but I wasn’t running in the top-10 all day. So it [Daytona] really answered some questions I had from my years of truck (series) plate racing.
“It was great. Unfortunately got caught up in some other folks’ mess but to finish in the top-10 was great and really showed how fast all our cars were and how much the work at Hendrick Motorsports shop and JRM closed the gap to the RCR cars. I felt like we could take the fight to them last weekend. Didn’t work out obviously, but I’m very confident going into this weekend that one of us can get the job done.’’
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